In his first inaugural speech, Bill White urged Houston to "embrace strangers." At the time, the new mayor didn't know just how much his call for inclusiveness, a big theme in his 2003 campaign, would be put to the test. Less than two years later, Hurricane Katrina would ravage Louisiana and Mississippi, and more than 100,000 strangers--neighbors, White likes to say--showed up on Houston's doorstep. Mayor White, and his city, gave them a bear hug.

Since last month's bridge disaster in Minneapolis, everyone's heard about America's 75,000 "structurally deficient" bridges. Although the label doesn't mean any of them are about to fall, the staggering stat reminds us how much government at all levels has neglected its infrastructure.

Want to know how hooked on drugs your town is? There's a remarkable and rather gross new way to find out. Scientists now believe they can measure the prevalence of cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin in a community's raw sewage.

A few years ago, I went to Phoenix in July. The temperature downtown was 106 degrees in the shade. Walking from my hotel to the convention center was a sweaty, lonely experience. Nobody else seemed brave enough, or perhaps dumb enough, to venture into this kiln on foot.

The sale of naming rights for stadiums, arenas and other public buildings is not nearly as controversial as it used to be. Perhaps we've all grown accustomed to the weird ring of venues such as Quicken Loans Arena or Merchantsauto.com Stadium. Or maybe, in an advertising- saturated world, we're now pros at tuning out corporate gobbledygook. Either way, our tolerance for sponsorship is growing

One reason why the affordable housing problem seems so insurmountable is that we usually try to build our way out of it. There's never enough money to finance new homes for all the low-income people who could use them. And if you want to wake up the NIMBYs, just propose building a large subsidized housing complex.

The town of Clayton, Missouri, loves neighboring Richmond Heights for its money. And Richmond Heights loves Clayton for its looks. If these two St. Louis suburbs get hitched, it'll be a Donald Trump-style wedding.

You can hardly blame Mayor Tom Menino for hating the building he
works in. Boston's city hall is an intimidating concrete battleship
from the 1960s. Nobody loves it except for a few architecture snobs,
who value it as an icon of a style fittingly known as "Brutalism."

Hoping to shore up its ailing hospital industry, New York is shrinking the number of health care facilities in the state. It is doing so by using a process similar to the way the Pentagon closes military bases.

Internet sales taxes go live on October 1. That's when online retailers will be asked to start collecting the tax--at least for the 18 states that have recently passed laws simplifying and harmonizing their sales tax systems. The big question for this meticulously designed scheme, which is strictly voluntary for the retailers, is how many of them will actually sign up.

A growing number of states are requiring hospitals to report how many patients come down with infections while in their care. Disclosure is meant to inform consumers, while pressuring hospitals to deliver better care.

Like most cities with large homeless populations, Berkeley, California, has a problem with transients abandoning bags or shopping carts of their belongings on the streets. What's unusual about Berkeley is what city officials do with all that stuff: They freeze it.

This was a survey that would have made Betsy Ross proud: hundreds of
flag experts studied the flags of 150 U.S. cities on the Internet and
rated them. And when the results came in last fall, Washington, D.C.,
could proudly boast that it has the best municipal flag in the land.

A white picket fence around a house is an American icon, as heavy in symbolism as its weight in wood. But is a white picket fence still a "white picket fence" if it is made from vinyl instead of real wood?

Booze flows freely on New Orleans' anything-goes Bourbon Street, where the only lewd behavior the cops seem to get fussy about is peeing in public. Relief is on the way, though, both for drinkers who can't hold it in and for residents who are tired of seeing their streets and alleys used as a urinal.

As schools take up the fight against child obesity, soda machines and french fries are clear targets. But one public school in Massachusetts has identified another indulgence that could be making kids fat: birthday parties.

Austin, Texas, is a well-run city, and by now managers there are accustomed to sharing their "best practices" with others. But Austin's latest consulting gig is a bit unusual: helping the U.S. Army run Baghdad.

Florida and Palm Beach County are founding a new branch of the renowned Scripps Research Institute, hoping to turn a 1,900-acre orange grove into a home for thousands of high-paying jobs in biomedicine.

For centuries, artists have painted life-like scenes that look so real that the French name for them, "trompe l'oeil," literally means "trick the eye." Now, Phoenix is applying these age-old deceptions to pavement, creating road markings that appear three-dimensional and are intended to fool drivers into laying off the gas pedal.

Walking tours are an increasingly popular tourist draw in New Orleans' French Quarter, but they're also creating tension between sightseers and residents, who find the sidewalk-choking crowds annoying.

State legislatures are putting up less resistance than expected to streamlining sales taxes. So far, 20 states have passed laws aimed at harmonizing their sales tax laws with each other, a key step toward taxing e-commerce. Several more are expected to take up sales tax bills later this year.

Propane is a cheap and clean-burning motor fuel favored by some state and local fleet managers, but two developments in Texas show that when it comes to this alternative fuel, progress is still one step forward and one step back.

A new jersey call center has moved back to the United States from India, settling the fate of 11 jobs that became a symbolic Ping-Pong ball in an emotional globalization game being watched closely on both sides.

Budget crises have some states cutting back on tax breaks for attracting and retaining businesses. New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey is proposing a one-year hiatus for a $38 million incentive program aimed at luring businesses to the state.

Walt Disney World and other Orlando theme parks and resorts cut their tax bills each year by claiming they are farming enterprises, in a scheme that two Florida counties say comes straight out of Fantasyland.

Before South Carolina first lady Jenny Sanford moved into the governor's mansion in January, the Chicago native recalled how she'd come to feel at home in her adopted state. "I even learned to like grits," she said.

In February, an anonymous band of large retailers struck an unusual deal with 37 states. The sellers, which reportedly include Wal-Mart, Target and Toys 'R' Us, agreed to begin collecting sales taxes from their customers who make Internet purchases.

"Tomorrow's tuition at today's prices." that's the slogan many states use to sell pre-paid tuition plans to parents and grandparents. The plans aim to make college affordable for the next generation of students while promoting in-state public schools.

To call something an "uphill battle" is a favorite cliche among policy makers, but when Las Vegas officials inspected a new addition to their city hall this summer, the phrase took on a more literal meaning.

They're not as notorious or dangerous as, say, the "Texas Seven," but Atlanta's transit system recently dubbed a group of local lawbreakers the "Famous Five," and it has taken the unusual step of permanently banning them from the city's subways and buses.

The debate over naming rights at sports stadiums is growing strangely philosophical in Pittsburgh as regulators struggle to decide whether labeling venues with the names of corporate sponsors constitutes "advertising."

Whether baby boys remember the pain of circumcision later in life has long been the subject of debate among medical researchers. But whatever the case, lawmakers in North Carolina won't soon forget their agony over the question of whether to end Medicaid coverage for the procedure.

T horny elaeagnus has long been a popular shrub with highway
landscapers, who planted the hardy, drought-resistant bushes in
medians across the South to shield nighttime drivers from the glare of
headlights. Now, however, it is falling out of favor as evidence
emerges that the shrub (pronounced el-e-AG-nus) is luring thousands of
birds to their demise.

For some communities, the decision to allow big-box retailers such as
Wal-Mart to come to town is laced with fear that the chain will kill
off commerce on Main Street. Now, however, local governments have a
new concern about Wal-Mart: that the superstores' massive parking lots
are being turned into free campgrounds for recreational vehicles.

Prisoners can be picky about what they eat, but even hardened
criminals would probably think it a stretch for California to declare
a state of emergency when its prisons run out of peanut butter and
jelly.

This year's look-before-you-leap award goes to Saratoga County, New
York. Officials there recently acquired a piece of tax-delinquent
property, only to find out later that the land contained an illegal
tire dump, a potentially huge environmental liability.

For decades, the game of dodgeball has been a staple of playgrounds
and physical education classes, making the act of getting beaned by a
rubber ball a right of passage for millions of elementary school
students.But now, the game itself is under assault. Officials in Cecil County, Maryland, were set to vote in January on officially banning dodgeball from the school system.

When the New Jersey Turnpike flipped on the switch for E-ZPass this
fall, it made cashless travel possible on toll roads from Boston to
Philadelphia. It also ushered in the largest experiment yet with tolls
that vary by time of day.

Many state and local officials were livid last spring when the e- commerce commission headed by Virginia Governor James Gilmore recommended against taxing goods sold over the Internet. They felt the report ignored their concern that such action would eat away at their sales-tax revenue and hurt Main Street retailers who still had to collect the tax.

To the people of Belgium, Manneken Pis is a whimsical fountain statue portraying a little boy urinating. To the people of Ohio, however, Manneken Pis is a brand of Belgian beer that can no longer be sold in- state.

As state transportation departments nationwide race to put up enough noise walls to quell the complaints of highway-side residents, Minnesota officials are entertaining a novel idea: tear some walls down.

For more than a century, bridges across the Ohio River have connected residents of Cincinnati to their neighbors in Kentucky. People on the Ohio side have long been accustomed to driving into Kentucky to fly in and out of the region's only international airport.

Up in the mountains of Montana, just south of Missoula, leaders of Ravalli County may occasionally have dispensed with administrative formalities. Sometimes, governing is still stunningly casual in small, rural places.

Manhattan's penchant for naming streets after people, places and events has given birth to some interesting addresses over the years. A section of 45th Street was once called "Jackie Mason Way" after the legendary comedian.

Anyone who has seen a delivery truck driving down the street with a parking ticket flapping from its windshield knows that the vehicles hold a special place in the hearts of parking-enforcement officers.